Phoenix demands The Greenery close or face legal action

The city of Phoenix has ordered medical marijuana dispensary The Greenery to voluntarily cease all business operations within one week or face legal action.

The city of Phoenix has ordered medical marijuana dispensary The Greenery to voluntarily cease all business operations within one week or face legal action.

Phoenix City Manager Steve Dahl said Friday that city officials sent a certified letter to operators of The Greenery, a nonprofit resource center for medical cannabis patients, requesting voluntarily compliance, by closing its North Main Street location, by Friday, May 16.

Dahl said The Greenery has operated illegally since January and that city officials could not allow the business doors to remain open.

"It is operating against our rules and against state law, so we have to do something so that laws are respected," Dahl said.

"We're asking them to close voluntarily. If they do it voluntarily, it will be done by end of next week. If they require an injunction, it will obviously take longer."

Phoenix council members directed city staff on Monday, by a vote of 5 to 1, to seek the injunction. Council president Bruce Sophie and council members Carolyn and Stan Bartell, Karen Jones and Chris Luz, okayed the decision while council member Terry Helfrich was opposed.

Andrea Adams, executive director of The Greenery, said she plans to keep her doors open until they are forcibly closed.

The Greenery opened in January and organizers say it provides resources to connect medical marijuana patients.

With Siskiyou Medical Supply inside Puff's Smoke Shop cited for selling marijuana without a state required license and ordered closed earlier this week by Ashland police, Adams called The Greenery "the last safe access point in Southern Oregon" and said she would "stay and fight" until forcibly closed.

"Without The Greenery, patients in Southern Oregon will have no safe access to the medicine they depend on and would have to go to Klamath Falls or Eugene," Adams said.

"My position as the executive director, and all of our position as patients helping patients, is that we will be there serving patients until we are forced to stop. And we will continue to fight for patients for as long as it takes."